Los Animales

"Everything you do, take it one step further. It makes it even better. And it becomes the unexpected." 

-Lady in a random house tour video I just watched. 

It was a rainy winter day in the heart of Covid lockdown, and I was in a mood to draw.

Nothing fancy. I wanted simple, cute, and fast. And you know, I was in the mood for some watercoloring too, so a quick Sharpie sketch with plenty of space to paint would be just my cup of tea.

I had zero expectations about this project. Just a way to kill some time.

But my imagination had other ideas.

As I rounded up supplies and got myself settled, the vision of my table littered with scraps of doodles tossed here and there felt a bit unsettling.

A book! my brain suggested. Organize the paintings as pages, and in the end, you'll have a tidy collection of your work instead of an unruly mess and won't that be pleasing. 

And so I decided to make a book. 

I finished today!

Happily, I keep files of simple images for drawing inspiration so I quickly settled on a collection of animals. 

Animal faces, to be exact. 

And you know, once I got started, I just went to town.

First, I drew all the faces. Real quick - I took no time to fuss. I kept the pen moving fast and loose because I didn't want to try too hard. This was just for fun, right?

Then the watercolors came out. On a few of the animals, I did a bit of crayon work first, to add details or texture, before splashing color across the pages. Oh, I was having a high old time. 

But wait. If this is a book, then a book needs a cover. Ooo, a burst of inspiration hit me and in a moment, I'd whipped together a grid of lines to complement all the circley faces. Well. Wasn't this all going swimmingly?!

And then...I stopped.

My project languished for weeks, and then months. Then years.

* * * * *

I'd run across my book-in-progress every now and then, and felt pangs of remorse for ignoring my half-baked baby. Not sure why I had dropped this project; I guess I wasn't sure exactly how to proceed. 

Yes, I could easily stitch up the pages to bind the book. But then what?

Did I give it a title? Write a story? Or even put a simple word or phrase on each of the pages?

I knew the book needed one more little push to completion, to give me the satisfaction of an idea fully played out, an impulse brought to full fruit. But darned if I knew what to do.

Today, I lost patience with myself and decided to take action. I still didn't have any direction for my stalled-out imagination, so I decided to sew the book together first and see what happened.

With needle in hand, weaving in and out through the center of the pages, my brain fell into the simple rhythms that often kick my imagination into overdrive. And here's what happened next.

As my eye fell on this animal and that, my Duolingo-addled mind automatically supplied the Spanish word for each animal.

El leon.

La rana.

El gato. 

And in an instant, I realized, that's it! It's a Spanish picture book of animals.

Without hesitation, I wrote out each animal's name on a scrap of paper and pasted it to the proper page.

This was the finishing touch I'd been waiting for. 

As a final flourish, I added a title to the cover of my entirely unexpected but now sweetly satisfying book: Los Animales.

Please enjoy this digital version of my hand-painted primer.

^ The first of three lions to grace the pages, this one looks like a not-too-fierce flower to me. 

^ Ribbet. The secret to drawing a successful frog is to get those weird eye bumps in the right place. 

^ Senor Gato. Meow. So cute. 

^ Though his Spanish name is literally Zorro, I will always think of him as Fantastic Mr. Fox.

^ Way cuter than the dudes who creep around my neighborhood at night. And I'm so satisfied that his eyes can be seen through his furry mask. 

^ For my money, this tiger is all Tigger. Which is of course a lovely way to be. 

^ The Malay word for owl is burung hantu (which means ghost bird) and in my mind, the Spanish word looks almost like an abbreviation. 

^ These kooky eyes do not give this bear the dignity he well deserves. Hang on, there's another.

^ Isn't that nose everything? You'd know he was a koala even if I didn't say a single word about it. 

^ It never dawned on me before that pandas have such big, blocky heads but this guy's noggin looks surprisingly realistic. Considering it's just a big white lump.

^ This lion looks more like a sun than a flower, which is slightly fiercer than the first one. 

^ A dog with floppy ears. Woof.

^ The Spanish say zebra as cebra which sounds vaguely British to me. 

^ Moo.

^ This is the better bear...and he has a fringe. How cute is that.

^ Another dog with bitty little "up" ears. He looks like Astro from The Jetsons to me. 

^ The third lion looks like a Valentine heart surrounded by a lacy mane. Cute, but entirely nonthreatening. 

^ A rosy cheeked panda. How huggable. 

^ Last, but most certainly not least, a Spanish-speaking horsie who is clearly employed to herd cattle on an Argentinian estancia.

^ Goodbye, my friends! Thank you for reading.